


The Little Desert Girl, the Snake, the Wolf, and the Prince

by hypraeteia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Animal Transformation, Brother's Grimm, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Includes events of TFA, Includes events of TLJ, It's Star Wars but told like a traditional Fairy Tale, Kylo Ren is cursed, One Shot, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot, The Force is celestial bodies?, What I wish would happen in IX
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 09:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18588370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypraeteia/pseuds/hypraeteia
Summary: A long time ago, in a kingdom far far away...Star Wars, but told as a traditional fairy tale. Think Brother's Grimm.





	The Little Desert Girl, the Snake, the Wolf, and the Prince

There was once a very poor family: a father, a mother, and their little daughter. The daughter was as bright and warm as the sun, and so her parents named her Rey. One day, a man came to their home and offered the mother and father a handful of silver coins and a single bottle of the finest wine if he could take Rey from their little house on the hill and make her his servant. Her parents were kind to her, but they did not hesitate to accept the man’s offer and send the little girl away.

Rey followed the man for miles and miles. The miles turned into days, and her legs and arms became strong and her skin browned underneath the sun. She followed the man all the way to a desert. For years, Rey worked for the man alone in the desert and lived in a little house by herself. She was very lonely until she was no longer a little girl but a woman. In her loneliness, she looked up at the sun one night as it disappeared over the horizon. She whispered to her namesake and wished she had a family. 

The next day, a man from the neighboring village came across Rey’s little house in the desert. He was lost himself and had no family of his own, and so Rey escaped from the desert with him. The man led Rey back to his own village, to the hillsides where she had been born. Rey grew to like the man on the long journey and liked the people in the village to which he brought her. She was happy, and so she did not look for her family, because she had already found a new one of her own. 

The village accepted Rey with open arms and taught her all about the land in which they lived. They showed her which plants were safe to eat, where to find the cool rivers that spilled down from the hills, and which animals were friends of the village. Her friend only warned her that one animal was not safe, and that he might appear as a snake, a wolf, or a man. Despite his many forms, he could only appear at night, and he would be a dark as shadow. 

Rey was very brave, for she had defended herself from many creatures in the desert. But her friend’s warning frightened her, and so she was careful to avoid those creatures when her sun was gone behind the hills. 

One night, however, Rey woke from her sleep and could not rest. The moon was very bright, and the wind made the trees whisper loudly. Taking the staff that had been her weapon in the desert, she followed the whispers into the forest. 

She walked and walked, until she reached a clearing, where a snake black as coal with a tongue red as blood was waiting for her. Rey had seen many snakes in the desert, but she remembered her friend’s warning, so she brandished her weapon. But the snake was fast, and he bit her before she could run away. Instead of dying from the poison, Rey’s eyes merely began to close in sleep. When she awoke, she found herself in a grand stone castle, overlooking the grasslands and her village. The moon still shone in the sky, and the snake remained with her. Wanting to return to her village, she asked the snake why he had brought her to the castle. The snake told her that he had brought her to a sorcerer, a man who studied the sun and the moon and the stars. Rey knew the sun, the snake said, and the sorcerer promised he would love him if he brought Rey to him, and he wanted the sorcerer’s love very badly. 

This made Rey very angry; she did not want to meet the sorcerer who would ask something so evil. Love is meant to be condition-less. Outside, rays of sunlight crested over the slopes of the hills, shining in beams into the stone castle. The light blinded the snake, who was meant to live in the moonlight, and Rey ran quickly back to her little village. 

That night, Rey again could not sleep. She knew the forest was dangerous now, and so she brought the sword of the leader of the village with her instead of her staff. She walked and walked until she reached the clearing where she had met the snake. This time, however, a wolf black as night waited for her. He was very angry with her for escaping the castle, and his white teeth frightened her enough for her to wield the sword that she had brought with her from the village. When the wolf saw the sword she had brought, he seemed to recognize it, and became very afraid and sad. He asked her if the sword was from the village in the hills. 

The wolf looked so pitiful that Rey began to feel a little sorry for him – and so she told him that it was, and she asked him why he was an enemy of the village. The wolf told her that he had once been a prince, the son of the leader of the village. The sorcerer had put a spell on him, and so his family had banished him to the forest. This had made him very sad and lonely, with only the sorcerer to love him, and so he was angry with the people from the village. 

Rey remembered how her parents had sent her to the desert, and how lonely she was there, and so she felt pity for the wolf. She put away the sword that she had brought from the village, no longer fearing him, and asked how they might break the spell so that he could return to his home. He told her that only the sorcerer could lift the spell, and that he would take her to him. He offered her his back, and they began the journey up the hills back to the stone castle. 

The wolf asked Rey why she was willing to help him when she came from the village that had banished him. Rey held on tightly to the soft black fur at his nape, and told him that she had been sent away by her family as well. The wolf became very quiet and troubled, but continued the journey up the mountain in the darkness, tears glistening in his eyes that followed the path to the castle. 

The wolf brought Rey into the castle’s great throne room, where the sorcerer was waiting for them along with all his knights. The sorcerer told the wolf he was very clever for tricking Rey into coming to the castle willingly, and cast a spell on her so that she remained motionless. The sorcerer then instructed the wolf to kill Rey, and promised him that he would lift his curse and the wolf would be free to roam the grasslands whenever he wished, in whatever form he desired. 

Rey struggled, but the invisible restraints that held her would not budge. The wolf considered her, bending his hind legs and baring his teeth as he prepared to rip out her throat. But to her surprise, the wolf only leapt over her head, and tore the sorcerer apart while he sat upon his throne. As soon as the sorcerer was dead, and Rey was free from her invisible bonds, she unsheathed her sword. She and the wolf battled the knights who had collected in the throne room as the sky began to turn a dusky pink with the sunrise. They were vastly outnumbered, but she and the wolf were strong fighters. The knights were no match for both of them together, no matter how many. 

When the fight was over, Rey regarded the wolf in confusion; for he was still a wolf, and no prince. The sorcerer was dead, so why did the spell remain? 

The wolf wiped the blood from his muzzle, regarding the throne that held the dead sorcerer. He turned to Rey, and confessed that he loved her. He asked her to rule over the grasslands with him in the stone castle, like the sun and moon reigned in the sky. But Rey knew the wolf was still cursed, that he was still an enemy of village, and she wanted her village to be free. The sun was cresting over the hills again, and so Rey ran from the castle all the way back to her village.

Rey went to the matriarch of the village and told her everything that had happened the night before. She was very happy to hear news of her son after so many years, but knew he could not return forgiven as long as he wished for destruction of the village. She told Rey that the curse prevented him from roaming the grasslands during the day, and that the village would be safe as long as the sun was in the sky. His mother sat under the sun and thought all day about her son. As evening began to set in and the moon rose over the hills, she left for the forest. 

Rey waited until the moon was at its zenith over the forest before she began to worry. Fearing that the son had taken the matriarch, she left for the forest for a third time with her sword. This time when she reached the clearing, she was met by a man just as dark as his other forms dressed all in black with inky hair and eyes. 

Fearing for the matriarch, she withdrew her sword, and he withdrew his own. She proclaimed that she would fight him if he did not release his mother, but the man was only surprised and very scared by her claim. Knowing now that his mother was in danger, he put away his sword and asked Rey to come with him to the stone castle to look for her. Seeing that he had not taken the matriarch, Rey agreed to walk with him through the forest and the hills. 

Rey remembered their last journey together, when he had not been the dark prince at her side, and that she had told him about her parents sending her away. She told him that the matriarch was happy to hear he was alive, and asked why she had sent him away. The man told her that it was not his mother but his uncle who had sent him away, and that his uncle had been afraid of the curse that the sorcerer had placed on him. He was angry as he spoke about his uncle but soft when he mentioned his mother, and Rey began to hope that the man might still have the goodness in him that she had seen the night before. 

When Rey and the prince reached the castle, it was empty - even of knights. The man seemed to know where his mother had gone, and led her down into the castle’s crypts. The matriarch was there, a captive of the knights, and overjoyed to see her son again. Their prince ordered the knights to release the matriarch, but they exclaimed that they would never let someone so important in the grasslands free while she threatened their rule. 

The prince and Rey drew their swords to fight side by side again. They were fiersome together, and they cut down the knights quickly. Before the last one had died, just as the moon was setting, the last knight turned to the prince’s mother to run her through. But instead of piercing the matriarch, the knights sword ran through Rey’s prince.  
The matriarch cried out, now free of her bindings, but distraught by the loss of her son in her arms. Rey’s eyes brimmed with tears, but the pain and loss in her chest did not prevent her from cutting down the one that had stabbed her companion. 

Throwing aside her sword, she gathered up the prince and cried. He had been selfless in love, and had earned her love in return. She held him until the sun returned to the sky, and at the sight of the light returning to the stone of the castle, Rey reached within herself. She closed her eyes over her companion’s dark head, and called out to whatever she had found in the desert that had brought her to the village. Whatever it was met the strength within herself, and she knew that her companion had been returned to her, and could finally return home.


End file.
